


are you aware the shape i’m in? (my hands they shake, my head it spins)

by veroniques



Category: Professional Wrestling
Genre: Kayfabe Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-14 15:45:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13010988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veroniques/pseuds/veroniques
Summary: It's just after Power Struggle. Trent has six missed calls on his phone.





	are you aware the shape i’m in? (my hands they shake, my head it spins)

**Author's Note:**

> not real (well, you know. chuck and trent, not dustin and greg), not mine, obviously. sorry, i played fast and loose a little bit with time zones. we'll call it creative license.
> 
> as always, thank you to the people who hand hold me through my dumbass writing process. i started this before wtl 2017 and wow it is hard to write sad fic when everyone is so happy, lucky that didn't last, hey?

Trent unlocked the door of his hotel room, taking a moment to thank whoever had the good sense to give him this shitty room on the first floor. Standing up any longer in that elevator seemed like a recipe for disaster. Standing up any longer at all, his wobbly knees corrected, seemed impossible. He had showered and changed at the venue, the doctors giving him the once over and an ice pack before easing him into the bus back to the hotel. His back, thankfully, was not as fucked up as he had thought. Still hurt pretty bad, though. As he stepped out of his undone sneakers, the thought of food vaguely entered his mind before being crushed by the sheer weight of failure he felt.

He had gotten close, hadn't he? Not close enough, of course. He finally collapsed onto the bed, flinging his phone and his room key out of his hand, his body screaming in protest at the sudden movement. Trent knew this was gonna happen. It's not like he went into a fight with Kenny fuckin' Omega and actually expected to walk out the other side unhurt, win or lose. But man, had he thought he might maybe do enough to win.

He could still hear it in his ears. The Bucks, alternating deftly between supporting Kenny and jeering at him. The latter had hurt, Trent was big enough to admit it. It wasn't fun to have your insecurities being picked over in front of a capacity crowd, especially not while you were getting your ass beat. Again though, he had expected that. What he hadn't expected, though, was the dull little ache that crept into his chest after the match, as he watched Nick and Matt hover over Kenny. He missed having someone having his back. He thought about Rocky for a second. He thought about Chuck for longer.

His phone beeped, stirring him from his bullshit reverie. Trent leaned over to his bedside table, scrabbling to get the phone sitting there, while also wanting to never move again. Finally he caught it between the tips of his fingers, but pulling it that couple inches close enough to grab hold was just as hard as kicking out after getting kneed in the head. Once he had it in his hands he took a moment to recover, adjusting his head so that his neck wasn't all scrunched up and weird.

He had six missed calls. Two from his mom, three from random numbers. One, most recent, from Chuck. He didn't even think about time zones, just pressed the redial button.

Chuck answered on the second ring. "Hey man." His voice was kinda low and thick. Trent instantly hoped he hadn't woken Chuck up, even if his phone told him differently. For Chuck to have watched, he couldn't have slept, but maybe he had fallen asleep once it ended. Trent let out a long exhale, scrubbing a hand over his face. "You watched the match?"

"Yeah." Chuck's voice sounded soft and quiet in a way he didn't recognise. "I saw the match. You got the shit beat out of you."

"Yeah man," Trent stretched out on the hotel bed, his entire body one big ache. His heart ached worse. "It's what I do."

"S'long as you get back up." There was a pause, and Trent could almost hear the faint sound of a bottle being opened, the soft clink of it against a glass. Trent could imagine it very easily, Chuck sitting in his living room at whatever fuckin time it was in Philly, drinking bourbon on his shitty uncomfortable couch, the one that Orange should have replaced months ago. Or maybe, Chuck was in bed.

(No, don't go there, Trent, he told himself. Not with your body all fucked up and your head not much better. And not with that bed being thousands of miles away.

\- and not with the person in it even further away, a shitty little treacherous voice in his head added.

Any thoughts in that direction were an exercise in pointlessness and Trent had done enough pointless shit for one night, or maybe his entire life.)

Chuck was still talking. "So Jericho, huh?" Trent could hear a barely veiled note of excitement in his voice. There was also, Trent noted, a tinge of something kind of like jealousy. "I bet Juice pissed himself. Is he just on loan for Omega, or will the rest of you mere mortals get a shot?" Trent shrugged, exhaling long and slow as he felt the ice pack on his shoulder drip down his chest. He shifted it so it pressed against his back. "Even if we do, I doubt I'd be in line." This was self loathing bullshit. Trent was mad at himself for saying it. This was the kind of shit he got mad at Chuck for saying.

Chuck paused, and Trent could hear him swallowing, the last of whatever was in his glass. "I should have been there." Chuck sounded regretful, not resentful, and Trent knew that they weren't talking about Jericho anymore. "Nah, it's okay." Trent didn't need to do this, he knew that whatever he said to Chuck, he was gonna feel his own way about it, and deal with it by posting a smart ass tweet about it two days from now. But he wanted to try. "You couldn't have done anything."

"No," Chuck agreed, not saying anything for a moment, the bottle opening, the clink, the pour, the swallow, the whole dance. "But I would have been there with you. I'd be with you now." Trent said nothing, but Trent could hear it in Chuck's voice. If he asked, Chuck might be on a flight to Japan within the day. He was worried that if he spoke, he might just ask, and he didn't feel he had any right to.

 

* * *

 

He thinks about two weeks ago. He thinks about Chuck nearly killing himself - nearly killing Ricochet, to try and get a win that slipped from his grasp, twice. He remembers watching Chuck in what passed for the locker room, peeling off his tights in silence. He remembers following Chuck out to his rental car, long after everyone had left. The way he silently opened the passenger door, getting in, sitting down. It had been dark outside, the only light coming off a street lamp which flickered intermittently, illuminating the inside of the car just enough so that he could see what he was doing, but not enough so he could see what a bad idea this probably was.

Chuck lifting his head from the steering wheel, leaning back against the headrest, as if, he reflected, he was trying to get as far away from Trent's worried gaze as possible. He remembers opening his mouth to try and say something, to make this all...less fucking awful, and finding nothing. His hands now, finding Chuck's hips, slipping inside the waistband of Chuck's shorts, eyes on Chuck's face to make sure it was okay. Chuck's face, turning half towards him, in shadow, in profile, eyes open, watching Trent, until they weren't. He remembers Chuck not saying a single word, barely moving except for the reflexive buck of his hips into Trent's hand. Trent doesn't remember what he said but he knows he didn't stop talking, talking to fill the awful silence radiating off of Chuck.

He remembers a bunch of shitty porno sounding cliches, he's pretty sure he spent at least two minutes telling Chuck just how pretty he looked like that, not that Chuck had been listening. He's almost certain whatever he said, what he meant was, 'I love you. I'm proud of you.' Chuck came apart in Trent's hands and Trent hoped he had done enough to put him back together.

Afterwards, as he was wiping his hand inelegantly on a stack of McDonald's napkins, he turned to look at Chuck, his body no longer slack with exhaustion and heartbreak, now keyed up and weirdly intense. "You okay, man?" Trent asked, staring at him cagily, as if a sudden movement would freak him the fuck out. Chuck had paused, before turning to him, half a rueful grin on his face, almost as if the past five hours hadn't happened, as if that title belt was still sitting in the back seat, put there as if carelessly strewn but really, positioned so that Chuck could see it in his rear view mirror, if he angled it just right.

(If Trent had been looking for it, he might have noticed that the grin didn't even come close to meeting Chuck's eyes. But that would have been a difficult realisation for him to make, considering that he wasn't meeting Chuck's eyes, either.)

Trent had got out of the car, Chuck already turning the key in the ignition before he had shut the door behind him. He hit the roof of the car once, meaning it to sound friendly. Drive safe, let me know when you get back, all that shit. It rang hollow on the roof of the car and as Trent stooped over to lean into Chuck's window, he was already pulling away from the spot, and whatever Trent might have said disappeared into the sound of his tires.

 

* * *

 

That was two weeks ago. And Trent had barely spoken to Chuck since. A few texts, some tweets maybe? Trent didn't remember. Nothing substantial. Definitely nothing remotely like what he probably should have said as soon as he jerked off his best friend in a rental car. Whatever the fuck you were supposed to say when you did something dumb like that. I'm sorry? Insulting, humiliating. I love you? Impossible, terrifying.

And here he was, and here they were. The same shit that didn't get said last time wasn't getting said this time and Trent found that it was this, and nothing else, not Kenny having kicked the crap out of him and put him through a bunch of tables, not still feeling like no one took him seriously here, it was this that made him feel so tired he wanted to cry. What the fuck was wrong with him?

Chuck was speaking again, Trent realised. "You did great, man. Like, four stars, at least.” He sounded tired but he sounded sincere, and it was the sincerity in his voice that broke Trent's heart a little bit. It was fuck knows what time in the morning. Chuck might have been a little drunk. Trent was more than a little punch drunk. He could afford to give a little sincerity back.

"Oh yeah? Thanks, man." He swallowed, shifting again to yank the now melted ice pack from underneath him, tossing it onto the floor. He'd have to move that later, housekeeping would probably freak if he left it there. "I, uh, I didn't get to say this earlier. But you were great too. In Reseda?"

The sentence ended on a question, though no question had to be asked. Trent could practically hear Chuck thinking about that question mark, and Trent kept talking, filling the space with words so that Chuck wouldn't have to contemplate what he might have meant. "The whole thing. Like, the whole night." He didn't know how else to talk about that one time he touched Chuck's dick without coming out and saying it, so he just kept repeating himself. He felt like a fucking idiot. "I wanted you, I wanted you to know. I was proud." Trent wanted to keep talking, to finish that sentence, but something crept into his throat and kept him silent.

Chuck swallowed, he could hear it through the phone, counting heartbeats while he waited for him to respond. "I'm gonna be there next time." Chuck said this with a level of self assurance Trent didn't normally associate with Chuck. Trent believed him, but mostly he was sure that Chuck believed himself, and that was the really startling thing. "I'm gonna be with you, man."

Trent let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. He still didn't know if Chuck meant 'with you', with you, or 'tag team' with you, or 'hand job in the locker room' with you, but he found that it didn't really matter right then. "I'd like that." He said, musing a little. "I -- missed you." He stopped talking. He could feel those words travel along the fucking phone lines, wires, cables, whatever. He could feel each stilted syllable that he dragged out of himself reaching towards Chuck, and he hoped it got there. Chuck had fallen silent, and he could hear what sounded like a palm scrubbing his chin, stubble bristling slightly against the phone. "Miss you too, man."

Trent said nothing. He felt slack, this feeling that was both relief and straight up emotional panic infiltrating his already exhausted body. He ignored the latter and focused on the adrenaline shot that was the former, letting it course through him, taking the edge off the worst of his pain. The other shit could wait until they were in the same time zone again.

Neither of them said anything for a few minutes. When Chuck did speak, Trent could practically hear the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. That fucking grin was a hook that'd yank Trent's heart out and all the way back to the States, if he let it.

"So, uh, you want me to talk you off?" Chuck's voice was the most awful version of every giant coat wearing, park lurking pervert you could possibly imagine, and it made Trent wheeze a little, what passed for a laugh in his current state.

"No, dude." He groaned, wincing as his ribs expanded and contracted, long slow breaths coming a little easier now. "I mean, yeah. But no."

"Okay, well, just in case, I'm here." Chuck's voice was back to normal now, and if Trent felt his battered, shitty, undeserving heart lift a little at the promise in that 'just in case', he didn't say anything.

"Call me tomorrow," Trent asked, knowing that he was drifting a little closer to the edge of sleep. He could just hear the sound of Chuck's breathing through the phone line. "I'm gonna figure something out. We'll figure it out."

Chuck's voice was far away by the time he answered, Trent dozing a little, oceans and cities and six years, their whole lives between them, but he still heard it. "I know. I'm with you."

 

**Author's Note:**

> lyrics are from i and love and you, by the avett brothers.


End file.
